Our founder – Peter Levin

Peter Levin, helped to launch the Penzance Literary Festival in 2010, and was involved until 2014.

As Founding Chair, Peter’s contribution to the success of the Penzance Litfest cannot be exaggerated. Peter has now handed on the baton to the current Executive team.

In a varied career, he has researched into the oxidation of magnesium and the planning of new towns, taught social policy at the London School of Economics and Cajun dancing at various folk festivals, and authored a series of best-selling guides for students, the Student-Friendly Guides published by the Open University Press. He reckons the experience of running the Litfest has required him to reinvent himself once more, this time as a trainee impresario.

After spending his working life in London, Peter settled in Penzance in 2005 with his wife, Gill, who has Cornish forebears. Feeling very much at home here – he says being Cornish is in part an attitude of mind, and one which he definitely shares – he hopes he can be regarded as a ‘transplant’ rather than an ‘incomer’.